In the Field

State

Activity

Type

Contact

Arkansas

The Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department (AHTD) will use PlanWorks to support outreach efforts associated with updating their Statewide Long- Range Intermodal Transportation Plan. AHTD will have extensive stakeholder and partner agency involvement that will ultimately lead to institutional changes in improving collaboration and decision-making processes.

The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) will use PlanWorks to improve its collaboration with various regional agencies and partners in corridor planning. Caltrans will widely deploy PlanWorks across the agency through workshops, forums, and outreach to partner agencies.

The Champaign County Regional Planning Commission will use PlanWorks to provide a clearly defined set of decision points for stakeholders and partners in the Curtis Road Corridor Study. The PlanWorks Assessments will allow the Champaign Urbana Urbanized Area Transportation Study staff to evaluate the ongoing collaboration and ensure partner engagement.

The Strafford Metropolitan Planning Organization (SMPO) is leading an interagency and statewide effort to use PlanWorks to assess the current scope of performance-based planning in New Hampshire, and develop a common framework for performance measures and objectives.

The North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) will use PlanWorks to conduct scenario planning for the Dallas-Ft. Worth region’s next Metropolitan Transportation Plan. NCTCOG also will collaborate with partners and stakeholders to establish performance targets that are appropriate for the region.

The Utah Department of Transportation will use PlanWorks to enhance the stakeholder engagement process, develop non-traditional performance measures and targets, and develop a framework for the next update to its Statewide Long-Range Transportation Plan.

The Virginia Department of Transportation will use PlanWorks to establish a shared vision among partners and stakeholders for the Route 29 corridor. The process will help the agency coordinate an update of the existing corridor overlay district with the statewide requirements for a corridor of statewide significance.

Challenge

Transportation agencies should be stewards of environmental and community concerns while delivering
transportation projects in ways that support a community’s vision. Integrating economic, environmental,
and community needs can be time-consuming, and requires effective and collaborative decision making in
order to keep projects on schedule. Transportation planners could use a systematic decision support tool
that integrates the community’s needs into the analysis, planning, and design of transportation improvement
projects.

Solution

PlanWorks is a Web resource that supports collaborative decision making in transportation planning and
project development. PlanWorks is built around key decision points in long-range planning, programming,
corridor planning, and environmental review. PlanWorks suggests when and how to engage cross-disciplinary
partners and stakeholder groups. This system can help build consensus throughout these processes.

PlanWorks has four major components:

Decision Guide - A troubleshooting guide describing the common decision points and opportunities for cooperation in the transportation planning and environmental review process. For each of the key decision points, PlanWorks provides policy and stakeholder questions, data needs, case studies and examples, and links to tools that can help support the decision.

Assessments - Interactive assessment tools that enable project stakeholders to identify opportunities to work together, improve interagency cooperation, and expedite project delivery. Assessments can be taken online or downloaded and used offline collaboratively.

Applications – A series of special topics that provide specific information and approaches for how these topics can be considered in the collaborative decision-making framework. Applications include performance measures, visioning, freight, and many other emerging and complex topics.